The journey from “what is Teach For America?” to “I am pleased to extend you an offer to join the 2010 corps!” is full of images. 

It all starts with the image of the face of a friend of mine, almost a year ago, as he told me he was joining the 2009 Teach For America corps, indicating in his subtle way, some mixture between eager anticipation and overwhelming anxiety.  I remember my nonchalant response, “oh, that’s really cool.”  I knew that TFA was a prestigious program, that to be accepted was an honor, but did I register the immense commitment he was making to the program?  To the kids whom he was aiming to teach?  To our society that he was hoping to better?  Not really… But I’m beginning to.

I remember piles of books checked out from libraries all over Boulder County, containing everything you could imagine regarding educational inequity and every case study, as far as I know, that has been ever conducted about the Teach For America experience.  Over margaritas, I would discuss the experiences in Los Angeles that I read about in Relentless Pursuit with anyone who would listen.  Even then, discussion wasn’t enough.  I wanted to go.  I wanted to start my own adventure.

I spent three straight, sleepless days in August filling out the written application.  I cancelled plans with friends, ate meals reluctantly when I was too hungry to think anymore.  The one time I was forced to step away from the computer during those 72 hours, I was headed to an appointment to change my tires.  Even the tires stacked up in the auto shop seemed to torment me, reminding me that my essay was 75 words over the limit.  By the end of the third day it was 500 words exactly and it was perfect.  I wonder how my classwork would turn out with that kind of commitment.

A few months later, on that very set of tires, I was driving to Denver for a doctor’s appointment the day before my big interview.  On the way home, I decided to scope out the interview location.  After navigating the rather confusing parking lot, I stepped into the building.  I was in awe of the touch-screen directory and glittering lights overhead, shedding their glamour on the marble floor.  Among the many organizations and businesses housed in that building was just about every governmental agency you could imagine.  I had only just finished a final and hadn’t slept or showered in days, decked out in a haphazard dress and shoes that spell L-O-V-E.  How out of place I felt, surrounded by suits.  I felt young, but also – just in the fact that I would be there the next day in a suit of my own – very, very old.

Then, of course, there was the Organic Chemistry lab on November 10.  It was the longest lab in my career as a science major and by the end I smelled so strongly of acid that it was with great reluctance that my friends hugged me to congratulate me.  You see, it was about 5pm, halfway through my lab, when I could no longer take the anticipation.  My hands shaking within their air-tight blue gloves, I reached for my Blackberry to find the most anticipated email of my life.  I was accepted.   Colorado.  Secondary Science.  Everything I wanted, perfectly set up.  There was my future, more lucid than ever, detailed in one email.  There it was, everything that I had been dreaming of, coming true.  And then came the congratulations, the hugs, the tears (my mother’s of course), and more hugs.

Through the intensity of Organic Chemistry and the usual drama of life, the awareness that I will be facing one of the most challenging and (I hope) rewarding experiences of my life for the next two years is like a flickering light, fading in and out of my consciousness as I go through my day-to-day activities.  When I judged a Middle School Science Fair a few days ago, it illuminated a whole realm of excitement within me, just as it had on November 10.  A few different times, this awareness has led me to lust after every gizmo and gadget you can imagine for my classroom next year and to inadvertantly look up lesson plans online during breaks in class. 

But this subtle awareness has also overwhelmed me.  A good friend of mine now refuses to call me anything but “teacher.”  He also took it upon himself to inform our entire class and professor of my acceptance and used my success as grounds to convince our professor to give us the afternoon off for “celebration.”  I find his behavior simultaneously flattering and embarassing, which is how he usually leads me to feel, but his enthusiasm on my behalf also terrifies me.  In fact, everyone’s enthusiasm and confidence that I will succeed terrifies me.

Of the many, many people I called on the afternoon of my acceptance, my friend who I mentioned before, the 2009 corps member, made me feel the best.  He kept going back and forth between extreme enthusiasm on my behalf and on behalf of the program and immense self-doubt and well, I guess I can come out and say it, misery.  But good misery, to paraphrase The Perks of Being a Wallflower, the kind of misery that just takes time.  His constant back-and-forth between the assertion that what we are doing is great, invaluable, promising, and rewarding and the awareness that it is the hardest thing that we will ever have to do and it takes a great, overarching persistence and strength to succeed, matched, in a much more substantiated way, the abundant fear and joy underlying everything I have done since I clicked that word “accept.”

So, without further ado, let the oscillating emotions begin.